Timberwolves Re-Brand: A Celebration, Part Two

Now that we’ve gone over the principles of a good redesign and reviewed the best and worst ones in recent years, let’s take a look at the best suggestions for a Wolves re-brand.

As Ben pointed out, there’s a ton of ideas out there and they’re all over the place. Luckily, Paul Lukas compiled a bunch that he liked the best. I have to be honest, to me none of them are nearly good enough.

None of them quite accomplish all of the goals required to nail a re-brand. But let’s give some credit where credit is due: Paul’s top vote went to a very original design that would make the Timberwolves the most unique looking team in the league. On the alternate jersey, the five trees combine to make a Wolves face: very cool.

These guys are so passionate about their uni set they made their own website. Respect. The general Timberwoles fan currently doesn’t even have enough passion for the team to actually wear  a jersey, much less design a whole set of them and create a website to get the word out.

But these jerseys break a few of my golden rules: more than two primary colors (blue, gray, and green) and they’re too busy. Plus, if the Minnesota professional basketball team continues to go by the ‘Timberwolves’, the jersey (and logo) needs to feature, you know, a Timberwolf.

I love how unique they are and the numbers on the shorts are a cool feature, but they’re not quite the answer.

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If you scroll through the ideas on the Flickr page you’ll see a ton of designs. I really like this set and these too. Both bring back the original blue and green colors and are provide a clean yet bold look. Nice work, guys.

But my perfect set of unis and new logo are a little different. Let’s start with the logo. I’m actually fan of the secondary logo and think it just needs a few tweaks to be a perfect primary logo. It  needs to be simplified and updated with some better colors.

On the wolf’s face take out the grey shading, yellow eyes, and the nose and teeth outlines.

Then, look to our past.  Use the Minneapolis Lakers as an inspiration for the primary sky blue color. Make the Wolves’ face white as well as the basketball so the trees, outline of the Wolf, and the circle around the logo are all the primary blue.

It’s be kind of like a minimalist version of this, only it’d use the outer blue color for all the non-white coloring.

Then add the name of the team in white font on the circle surrounding the logo, a la the Atlanta Hawks re-brand. Not as big of lettering with the Wolves logo, but you get the idea.

This look would give them a clean, yet bold design that gives a nod to the past of Minnesota basketball. (It follows all my rules people! If you want to shorten ‘Minnesota Timberwolves’ lettering to just ‘Minnesota Wolves’. I’d be on board with that as well.)

Now, to the unis. I absolutely love using the white and blue unis from this set as a starting point. The sky blue really pops, doesn’t it?

With the blue unis, I’d replace the black with the white from the logo. It’s already frickin’ dark enough in Minnesota all year long; brighten up those unis!

On the home whites, it would obviously say ‘Wolves’ instead of ‘Minn’. With the road jersey, I’m not a big fan of ‘Minn.’ so I’d prefer KG’s favorite ”Sota’ or even ‘Minny’. Anything to avoid the busyness of ‘Minnesota’ on the road jersey would be an upgrade.

With the shorts, you could add the new primary logo on the left side, just like so many teams are doing now. If you insist on having the trees in the uni, they can be inserted on the sides of the shorts and borders of the jersey in the opposite color. Kinda like what Stanford does with this one. This keeps the trees from distracting from the overall look, like you know those green trees would.

I think that covers it for what I’d like to see with the home and road unis. For the alternate, I see this as an opportunity for the Wolves to make up for Sacramento’s mistake. When you look back at the KG era unis, I think the black alternate is easily heads and shoulders above the rest.

They could just straight up use that jersey as their alternate again and I’d be ecstatic. If they had to update it, they could do a few things: Change the lettering to just ‘Wolves’, make the trees white instead of green, and add a black & white primary logo to the shorts.

Either way, this would be a baller jersey and a great nod to the only good years the Wolves have ever had.

Alright, that’s it. I’ve laid out my guidelines for a great re-brand, explained why it’s such a big deal, shown you some of the best and worst of recent years, and laid out my case for my version of what they should to.

Next: Is Ricky Rubio Still Underrated?

Let’s hope they listen to me and  pull off something sweet that will revitalize their look and give the fans a reason to celebrate and open their wallets.

At the very least, please don’t screw it up!